Shane Cronin gets a close-up view of the underwater volcano that erupted spectacularly in January.
Prof Cronin hopes to land on the two HTHH remnants at some point as part of his survey work.
His assessment will also be greatly assisted by the flotilla of research vessels heading for the volcano, including a British robot boat that will spend a month over the top of the caldera. The flotilla will map the shape of the underwater mountain to see how it has changed. The suspicion is a portion of the volcano's flank or part of its caldera wall collapsed to trigger the tsunami.
"This eruption produced the largest ash column that's ever been measured on satellite data and very large atmospheric pressure waves that travelled around the Earth. It really was a spectacularly big event," said Prof Cronin. "And because most of the evidence is underwater, there needs to be these boat studies, as well as the studies I'm doing on land, to try to understand just what went on in this event, and then what this means for the literally hundreds of other volcanoes of this similar type and similar depth below sea-level - what is the potential for them to produce deadly eruptions?"
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